Easiest Nachos and Guacamole Ever (and wedding dress shopping)

After a long day of shopping and being rained upon, we finally found my elopement dress! I have to tell you this story, there is no way around it, but if you really just want the recipe, it is at the bottom. Otherwise, bear with me. Dress shopping was a nightmare from the beginning, so words cannot describe how relieved I am to have finally found what I wanted all along. As you may have all figured, I am not a conventional lady, and I wanted my civil ceremony dress to be Gothic Lolita. In Germany, it is customary to have two weddings- the civil service, and then later a church wedding. We are not religious, so instead we are eloping now, and we will be having a bigger wedding in a few years (i.e. as soon as we raise the money). So for the civil ceremony, I wanted a Lolita dress, and then a pouffy corsetted punk/glam dress for the wedding wedding. You can really only get true Gothic Lolita clothing from Asia, so several months ago I ordered a dress from a Chinese company.

This was my first mistake- I have ordered Lolita fashions from Japanese dressmakers, and since it is a Japanese fashion, it would have been more logical to go with a Japanese designer. But if you have ever tried to navigate a Japanese Lolita website as a foreigner, you will know how daunting it is, so this Chinese website seemed professional and easy to use. After a month of hearing nothing about my dress, I wrote them and asked them where my order was. And they said my payment didn’t go through, so they didn’t bother to contact me or even try it again. I was furious, but they promised me to try it again, and then they could make my dress very quickly. Fast forward almost another month; they sent me a photo of my finished dress, for approval before they mailed it to me.

The dress I ordered.And the dress they tried to pass off as the dress I ordered.

You can imagine my reaction. As I am typing this, I am laughing hysterically, but at the moment I received the photos, I was about to punch someone. I was on a train, shouting. People were staring. Mr. S was trying to be calm, but we were pretty much sure our money was completely lost at that point. And it wasn’t the most expensive dress, but we are struggling artists, and this was a huge deal. I mean, these people knew that this was my wedding dress. Did they really expect me to happily waddle down the aisle in this monstrosity? When we got home, Mr. S did some sleuthing, and found out that they basically steal other designer’s photos, and pretend that they are their own dresses. We filed a fraud suit with Paypal, and I have to say, Paypal was amazing. We had our money back within 72 hours.

So, because I am supremely stupid and apparently incapable of learning lessons, I endeavored YET AGAIN to buy a dress online. Now, in my defense, I had not seen anything remotely “me” in Frankfurt- everything is so conventional here fashion-wise. And there was no way I could afford even a cheap actual wedding dress. Plus, I wanted to save that for our later wedding. So I thought this time I would find an American designer, who makes each garment by hand. I found a woman in California on Etsy, and she said she could whip up a custom dress for me in two weeks. It was a rockabilly style, knee length with a full circle skirt, sweet-heart neckline, and long sleeves. Sounds gorgeous, right? And all of the photos on her website, to her credit, were beautiful. She had over 218 glowing reviews.

My dress arrived a few days ago, and I had to go to customs and pay 68 euro in tax just to pick it up. It was in a very tiny package, so I was becoming worried as to why it would fit in what was essentially a large document envelope. When I got it home, I tried it on immediately with shapewear, and realized the dress had many problems; it was see through, was ivory when I had ordered white (my shoes are pure white steel-soled New Rock pumps), you could see all my shapewear and bra straps since the shoulders were so broad, some of the seams weren’t properly sewn down, it was made of a cheap looking jersey- yes, my dears, you did read that correctly- jersey, thus the jersey material clung tightly and amplified all of the aspects of my body I am most eager to hide, and there was a 1/8 inch hole in the middle of the left boob.

At this point, my panic came in the form of stupefaction. I realized that I was going to have to go out and buy a conventional dress or show up in my pajamas. The latter option seemed quite attractive. After a day slogging around all the major shops in Frankfurt looking for classic-white-dresses-made-for-hourglass-figures and finding only boring-white-dresses-made-for-what-can-only-be-interpreted-as-child-brides, and having no less than two public meltdowns with poor befuddled Mr. S, I concluded that THE UNIVERSE IS AGAINST ME.

That night, I slept fitfully, disturbed by the most terrible nightmares. I dreamt that Mr. S brought his Ex to live with us, and they both decided to have a conversation with me while I was sitting on the toilet, and wouldn’t leave. Then we were seated at the table, and I was pouring her tea. Suddenly, my contact lens fell out, and rushed to get a new one. The Ex tilted her head to the side like a creepy doll, and with staring eyes, began to recite childish non-sense. She reached across the table and took my new contact lens, tore the packet with her teeth, and commenced to eat my contact lens. I screamed and shook her, and told her I couldn’t afford any more lenses, and that I am practically blind, and Mr. S came in and told me I could pack my bags. Weeping, I gathered my belongings and left, while the Ex giggled maniacally from the front porch. (In real life we don’t have a front porch).

This morning, I awoke and, momentarily forgetting the fact that THE UNIVERSE IS AGAINST ME, I decided to attempt to make waffles again. I bet you know what’s coming. Yup, you guessed it, the waffles were complete crap. I even diligently followed a recipe by the Pioneer Woman, who is my all-time favorite food blogger, which means that I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this waffle maker is a fucking piece of shit. So now I have to figure out how to clean it well enough to return it, which is no easy task here. I should have known that 20 euro was going to get me a shitty waffle iron. I mean, some of them are over $300!

So, hungry and discouraged, we ventured out shopping again. This time I checked blogs on rockabilly fashion in Frankfurt, trying to find out where rockabilly people buy their clothes. And to my surprise, there was one boutique in Sachsenhausen. We decided to go there first, and then if we didn’t find anything, to bite the bullet and go to the bridal shops.

When we arrived at the shop, I immediately found a small rack of white dresses! I was so thrilled, and I literally took every single one of them off to the dressing room, except one. The owner said she thought the one I left might fit me, and said she thought it was very flattering, but I just didn’t feel like it looked very “me.” I tried on dress after dress, and all were either huge or tiny. Sadly, I turned to my rejected dress. I pulled on the fluffy white tulle, and began to get excited as the dress slipped easily on. I asked Mr. S to zip me up, and when I turned around, there was that funny look in his eyes, and he said “honey, this is It.” And It it was. We stepped out of the shop and into the rain, feeling elated. “You know,” Mr. S mused, “maybe THE UNIVERSE isn’t against you. Maybe it was just making sure you would buy exactly this dress.”

We continued shopping anyway, this time for Mr. S, and we found some cute shirts. Then, happy and exhausted, we came home and made nachos and watched The Ouija Experiment. Most of the time when I make nachos, I load them up with all sorts of awesome things. But this “recipe”, which ought to be called “stuff combined with other stuff,” is perfect for those nights when you just don’t give a fuck and wanna watch TV.

EASIEST NACHOS AND GUACAMOLE EVER

tortilla chips (I use both natural and flavored ones, and mix them in the pan

Heat your oven to its highest setting, and put your chips in a baking pan. Cover them with grated cheese. Put the other stuff in a bowl and mash it with a potato masher until it looks like it should. By the time you’ve mashed everything (a few minutes), your cheese should be melted. Pick out a movie and enjoy!

Even though the movie had terribly bad acting, and failed miserably in trying to fit in the found footage genre, it had some nice surprise shocks.
Watching a scary movie with a cat on ones lap will be painful.